It feels like 2015 has been the Year of Star Wars, and rightfully so. Lucasfilm and Disney are introducing the franchise to an entire new generation of fans with next month’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which doubles as a sequel and a foundation for a brand new series of films that will be released in perpetuity until the world ends, probably. Today, a slew of new information is hitting thanks to Entertainment Weekly’s all-Star Wars issue, hitting stands this Friday, and in addition to interviews and such, the issue also provides us with a bounty of new images from J.J. Abrams’ film.

These are exciting looks at characters we’ve seen before, but it shows them in new lights and even reveals a couple of interesting plot points. For instance, we can see that John Boyega’s Finn and Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron cross paths early in the film, with Boyega still in his Stormtrooper uniform and presumably after Dameron’s been interrogated by Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren. Moreover, it hints at the costume switcheroo that takes place at some point in the story.


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One of the more fascinating points revealed in the EW piece is that not only was the villainous henchwoman Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie) intended to be played by a dude, but the armor for Phasma was originally designed to be Kylo Ren’s armor. Additionally, the Stormtroopers in the film are played by a mix of male and female actors, so the litany of "deaths by laser fire" will not be gender specific.

The First Order troopers, however, have been indoctrinated with a very twisted view of the events from the Original Trilogy:

Boyega says soldiers raised from childhood to serve this remnant of the scattered Imperial forces are fed propaganda about the heroes of the Rebellion. Unlike Rey, he has learned a lot about Luke Skywalker — but he has been taught he was a villain who destroyed the benevolent Empire.

As for Rey, the EW issue reveals that Daisy Ridley’s character was abandoned by her family as a child (hmm, I wonder who her parents could be…):

Rey was ditched on Jakku by her family when she was a child and has no idea why — or why they never returned. “She’s been alone for a long time,” Ridley says. "When something occurs when you’re 5, you know what went on but you don’t understand the reasoning. She's hopeful for what lies ahead, whether that involves the past or not." So why hasn’t abandonment made her bitter, angry, and… prone to the Dark Side? “Hope makes people good, a lot of the time,” Ridley says. “You hope for a brighter future, and resentment is outweighed.”

As for the film’s main villain, Driver says the motivation for Kylo Ren (besides avenging the death of Darth Vader) is something more universal:


“When you break all of those things down, really it’s just because someone wasn’t loved enough or felt betrayed. That’s what makes those movies so universal. I think they can get in your mind in big and sweeping ways.”

So peruse the large gallery of images below, via EW. Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens in theaters on December 18th.

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